History Begins at Sumer

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others” (Robbins, Tony). So often, people underestimate how different and similar we actually are to one another. Few people really understand that there can be several similarities drawn from various groups of people. From a group of people living in 2012, or to a group of people living 4000 years ago, several similarities and differences between the different times can be discovered. In the book History Begins at Sumer, the author, Samuel Noah Kramer, depicts various viewpoints about the Sumerians, and associates them with ours. It is important for people to appreciate the way life was for people who lived 4000 years or more before us. This way we may see why we do certain things the way we do, and how it all came to be. From the book, it is easily seen that there are major differences between society then and now. Whether it has to do with religious practice, how people wrote, education, occupation and more, as expected there are natural occurring differences, yet are still closely related to our modern day society. We as a group of people wouldn’t know some of the skills we use today if it wasn’t for the teachings and practices being passed down from one time era to another. Looking at the similarities and differences between two cultures is something that can be of some interest to those who want to know how we came to be. Samuel Noah Kramer believed that today’s society and the one the Sumerians lived in were easily comparable. Some of the major focuses of comparison were occupation, education, technology, and much more. There are enlightening discoveries and observations that have been made, in which focus is brought upon each societies differences, similarities, and knowing the importance between the two.
Finding out about a culture’s different way of life that existed thousands of years...